Boss Poles- worth it?

[d_fly]

Are boss poles worth taking on a Nob leading a bunch of boys, or is it generally better to rely on Mob rule to see the orks through? Also, do you guys usually just put the boles on the models of aesthetic purposes, or do people tend to bust out "WYSIWYG" on that?

[Architech]

If you make it clear that they are just for looks it's fine...just don't have half as actual WYSIWYG poles and the rest not, as the confusion would be tough.

I find that the pole is not...usually needed. But I tend towards mob rule size mobs. If you have a reason for smaller mobs (trukk based lists or something), then the small cost is worth it.

[d_fly]

Ok cool, that's what I figured. I'm aiming for a "Green Tide" style army, so will have several large groups of boys. Thanks Arch.

[Skyy9432]

For their points, I even run one in my larger mobs. Plain and simply because I use them in quite a "kamikaze" way, and even as a sandpit to keep enemy units tied up. As soon as they start to drop to numbers lower than 10, I want to squeeze every last drop of attacks I can from them and see how long I can keep my opponents units in combat before they finally get enough attack to chew through the guyz ^^

[SourImplant]

I look at it this way. If you can cut your mob in half and still have Mob Rule, you probably don't need a bosspole. By the time it becomes an issue, the mob is already all but wiped out.

[Nick]

The way I see it, is for 5 points I can almost buy another boy, but for the same 5 points, I can keep 11 boys in the fight for longer.... Just my 2 cents, and exspecially being as you're going to take massive casualities, before you even get there, but if you are able to get even 10 orks there, you will be able to do some serious damage.... However if they break, you're completely out of luck.

[daddy4count]

I tend to take them in boyz mobs... but they don't get used often.

I have to say though... several games where I'm down to a lone mob of just a hand full of boyz and their Nob it has saved them running away and they lived to fight again.

Those games that come down to the wire can be swung by that 5 point bit

[incubus]

BP are definitely worth their value imo.

[Ann]

I agree that the bosspole is definitely useful, almost a must-have, in the smaller mobs like in a trukk. I've found that having it in the 30 ork mobs in my battles against regular space marines to be useful as well, given that it only costs 5 points, because I've often had 6 - 8 orks break and run out of assaults and get swept and annihilated by higher initiative combatants. (It isn't that hard to beat initiative 2!) The reason I find it useful to get that second morale roll is because 6 - 8 choppa orks in an on-going assault is 18 - 24 attacks and that can still be a potent force with half-way decent dice rolling, especially given the fact that being in an assault protects them from being shot at. Toss in a nob with a klaw, who can't be singled out except by that Telion rotter, and all the more reason to spend that five points to possibly prolong your assault staying power by a turn or two. Once they do run, chances are the remaining orks are dead, which frees up marines to go shoot and assault some other innocent ork unit that was simply minding its own business. So for me the extra five points is worth it.

-- Ann

[daddy4count]

... even more so in a larger mob. By the time they run they are below 50% and can't ever regroup. They just run until they fall off...

[Ann]

... even more so in a larger mob. By the time they run they are below 50% and can't ever regroup. They just run until they fall off...

Good point!

[Ugh]

Also remember that if your opponent is aware of what the bosspole can do - he should be aware - there is a fairly good chance that he will pour alot of firepower into the unit - cus as long as the fatty with the pole is alive ... the unit of boyz will be dead hard to shift

[Ann]

Had a command and control game tonight set in a ruined town against my husband's space marines, who were sporting their new Whirlwind for the first time. Had two guys with boss poles - the warboss in the trukk with 11 'ard boyz, and an upgraded nob in a unit of 30 regular boyz. The boss pole was no great shakes in the 30 boyz unit. I got down to eight boyz in an assault when I had to roll, failed, wounded a guy to re-roll (he saved) and then failed again. Amazingly, I actually managed to escape the sweeping advance and retreat three inches.

The unit with the warboss piled out of their trukk after the Whirlwind immobilized it with a hunter-killer missile and then a bunch of terminators blew it up. They assaulted the terminators, killing them all and taking some losses and then the space marines forced a morale test in their subsequent shooting phase. I failed and killed a boy to re-roll and made it. This is key because if I had failed that unit wouldn't have come back and would have carried my unwounded warboss with them.

Thanks to the boss pole they were able to go on from there to wipe out a tactical squad, and then they assaulted and exploded the whirlwind, and then they were in position (down a couple more when the whirlwind exploded) to contest his command post and win the game. All of this because of said boss pole.

My cowardly warboss, Hungry, really loves his boss pole and really hates his power klaw, even though he grudgingly concedes its necessity to his Big Mek colleague. He finds that people don't try to hurt him so much because of the pole, but he has found that everything with a klaw has a "it must die by fire!" sign on it.

-- Ann

[Ann]

More on bosspoles: Played a game last night with my husband. My warboss was in a unit of nobz, and I neglected to give the warboss a bosspole but one of the nobz in the unit had one. I had to make a morale roll after losing a bunch of nobz when they got assaulted by terminators after the blue rogues blew up their trukk. For once the warboss survived an initial round of combat. Now the thing is, when you have a boss pole, do you still get to use the morale of the highest guy in the unit to re-roll or do you have to use the morale of the guy sporting the pole?

The text in the orc codex in part reads, "Each time a unit with a Bosspole fails a morale test you may choose to inflict a wound on that unit (not on the model with the Bosspole) in order to re-roll that Morale test (p. 92).

This leads me to believe that if I have a pole-less warboss with Leadership 9 and a bosspole sporting nob with Leadership 7, I still get to use the warboss's 9 because otherwise I would think the text should say something like, "you get to re-roll using the leadership of the model carrying the bosspole." Didn't see anything about it in the FAQ but I wanted to check on here in case I missed something or am overly viewing the text through green skin-tinted lenses.

-- Ann

p.s. I wonder - if you shoot a vehicle to get the passengers out of it can that same unit then assault them? Personally, I think they should be able to. Didn't see anything about it in the FAQ or the rules but perhaps I missed something? It seems kind of silly that my orks can't be assaulted by people who just blew up their trukk.

[Architech]

The answer to both is yes. You always use the highest LDR value unless told otherwise. Also their assaulting the unit in the transport after shooting the transport is in fact allowed in the rules...I do not have a reference location for you, but I assure you it is allowed

[Ann]

Also their assaulting the unit in the transport after shooting the transport is in fact allowed in the rules...I do not have a reference location for you, but I assure you it is allowed

I'll take your word for it because it seems just too silly otherwise. My warboss, Hungry, also agrees with you completely about the bosspole thing. He likes to make sure that the nob who wins the daily sucking up and toadying to the warboss contest gets the pole so all Hungry has to do is snap his fingers and maybe give a significant nod and the bosspole-carrying nob immediately stabs someone in the kidney in order to raise the general espirit de corps of his troops.

And the nobz compete pretty heavily for the right to carry that bosspole because for some reason the guy with the bosspole always seems to be the last nob to fall when things go bad. In fact last night, the nobz made a foray towards the space marine objective (a huge, golden space marine statue they wanted to cart off and melt down for various purposes) and in the end there were only two of the ten original nobz left when they both decided to hoof it to go do a surprise inspection of the lobba unit. So the nob with the pole stabs the other guy, kills him, and then no one is left alive to say that he ran away! Unfortunately by the time he got there the space marine captain had rode up on his bike by himself, fired a couple of stormbolter rounds over the grot krewmen's heads and they hitched up their cartsquigs and hauled their artillery away!

thanks,

Ann

p.s. I did some more digging and found the reference that allows people to assault passengers from vehicles that unit just destroyed. The text is in the "Destroyed - Explodes" entry on p. 67 of the core rules.

[Badarmies2]

Here is what I will say, all my Nobz accept the deathstar are modeled with boss poles, however I don't always buy them. They are that 5 point piece of wargear I use to round out points at the end of my boyz are all maxed. I find the 5 points is better spent elsewhere. Typically by the time my orks are down to bosspole time I have hidden a wound on the nob and they have done there job and second wave is coming in. I almost always buy it for my stormboyz and kommandoz though because they start small and cost more. TBH its one of those peices of wargear that rarely makes a difference either way.